Elephants never forget
by ExpensiveImagination
Summary: "She sees Dan again, literally minutes before Serena gets married." Future fic in which Dan and Blair find each other ten years later.
1. Chapter 1

_**Elephants Never Forget**_

**Expensive Imagination**

(A/N: For some reason pulling dan and blair apart gives me more inspiration? I don't know, but this is here so hey.)

* * *

In ten years she'll have a bob. Short, dark hair that swings just above her shoulders, straight and smooth and tucked neatly behind her left ear as she adjusts the bags in her arms.

He'll see her, but won't say anything.

He doesn't really talk to anyone in New York anymore, apart from his dad.

Why would he? He alienated himself with that book of his long ago.

* * *

It's not a sequel to Inside, but people take it as one, guessing which characters he's talking about from his first book; who these 'fictional' people are in the real world; and what they did to Dan to make his book so angry and bitter and fucking _scary._

It's not a best seller, but it's critically acclaimed. They call it _chilling_ and _dark_ and compare it to a Bret Easton Ellis novel.

None of it makes him happy.

None of it.

* * *

In ten years she'll be divorced.

"I'll always love Chuck," She'll shrug to Serena one day. "But I'm too tired for passion and only passion. It hurts too much. You need more than love, S." She'll tell her friend, taking another large drink from her champagne glass.

Serena just adjusts her wedding dress nervously.

* * *

She sees Dan again, literally _minutes_ before Serena gets married.

S went out for some air, and Blair wanders out to find her, when she sees them.

They're standing across from each other, tall and beautiful; stiff and awkward.

He reaches out an arm, his hand open as he hands her a thin piece of paper wrapped in ribbon.

She takes it, Blair watching from behind one of the church's elegant front pillars. They won't be able to see her, she's sure.

They're too busy focussed on each other, anyway. Always _were_, she thinks snidely.

Serena takes the offering he's holding, pulling the bottom of the bow and unravelling the paper. It's old and lined and crinkled everywhere.

But even Blair knows what that is.

_It's my story,_ She sees Serena mouth.

_...I just... _Dan stops, trying to find his words. He looks up at her earnestly. _This is how I see you, Serena. Not like the person I painted in my books, ok? You're a beautiful girl- a beautiful woman- and I hope you're really happy with Josh._

Serena doesn't say anything, but Blair knows what a crying girl looks like from any angle.

_Thank-you,_ she tells him, grasping his hand one last time, before she turns back, heading in Blair's direction.

Dan's looking at her, looking at Blair, and their eyes meet once before she turns away, hurrying to catch up to the bride.

Dan Humphrey means nothing to her now.

* * *

Serena's wedding goes off without a hitch.

Lily cries and Rufus holds her hand, S looking radiant; godlike; in _love _as she says _'I do,'_ Josh slipping a ring on her finger with a steady hand and a goofy grin.

And Blair? Blair feels her hands shaking, her throat closing up as her life starts to pale in comparison to Serena's.

Because hasn't that always been the way.

* * *

They're both outcasts.

Dan in the obvious ways, socially snubbed from the Upper East Side, and not _barred_ from certain events and parties, but certainly not invited either.

Whereas Blair, Blair's just alone. All alone in a big penthouse with no friends and no family- not anyone who needs her or whom she needs, anyway.

Outcasts in a city that's only so big.

* * *

He's been living all over the place for so long now that it's weird to be back in the city.

But it's good, too. Comforting.

It's cold here, with people and buildings everywhere, and really, it's just one big block of streets, a man-made mess, but to him...

To him it feels real, it feels familiar. It feels like _home_.

More so than palm trees and beaches, anyway.

* * *

He gets another place back in Brooklyn, and the Upper West Side is as high scale as he will dare to go.

No more Upper East Side for him. Because what's the point? He said goodbye to that life a long time ago.

...Didn't he?

* * *

Maybe she's a self-sabotager.

Maybe she just wants to see someone as alone as her.

Maybe she's curious after all of these years, a little bit nostaligic, too, over the fact that _they're_ the ones left, still wandering, still waiting.

And maybe, just maybe, she missed him a little bit.

But then again maybe it was just coincidence that she finds Dan again.

* * *

When she says _finds_, she doesn't really mean 'finds'.

It's not as if she goes actively looking for him or anything, scouring the streets for a Humphrey sighting.

No.

Definitely not.

She just...

There's this really nice cafe near Columbia that she used to go to all the time between study breaks. It's in Morningside Heights and they have macaroons at a ridiculously low price and coffee that actually tastes like _coffee_ and not the crap that they serve at her work.

(She'd send her assistant out to get it for her, but then her assistant would _know_ about the place, and-no.)

And it's then, when she's walking up the street to her cafe, that she sees him.

She stops, the clicking of her heels pausing. He hasn't seen her yet, posed on the other side of the street, a thick jacket coating his arms, a little bit of scruff masking his chin. He's wearing worn jeans, but nice suede shoes, and there's no beanie, just an expensive looking scarf that she's sure was a gift- he would hardly know the difference between that and something from Wal-Mart- and-

And he's looking at her.

They're staring, standing in the middle of their respective streets, just... Staring.

And then she does it.

She leans.

* * *

All it takes for him to come over is her gesture, the bare heeled leg moving out towards him, mouth opening with intent that doesn't follow through.

He does it for her, crossing the street, and then he's there, in front of her, dark eyes a little more crinkled than what she was used to, hair cropped short and close. These are good changes, though, not bad.

He looks... He looks like he's finally grown up. And she must look that way too, and that's what makes her ask.

"Coffee?"

He doesn't say no.

* * *

It starts off with small talk as they sit, Blair taking what can only be described as delicate bites from a macaroon, Dan polishing off a plate of French fries. ("_No one makes fries like they do here in New York, all right? I've been deprived_.")

He's been travelling a _lot_. India, Asia, all over Europe...

"Found what you were looking for?" She asks him- because that's what those trips sound like, what she'd be doing if she went to all of those places: trying to find herself.

He quirks a self-deprecating, sad little smile at her. "Not really."

And finally, _finally_, honesty. He's being honest with her, something that no one in her life seems to be.

Everyone else is just so fucking _happy_ all of the time, reaching for their goals, or content with what they have, living life with ease.

Hearing that Dan Humphrey's confused too, doesn't, for once, make her feel like she's been lumped in with the loser, that she's lost control again.

No, instead it makes her feel secure. Reassured. Less alone.

She reaches for her drink with a steady hand, a sort of smile working its way onto her lips.

Her and Dan Humphrey. Who would have thought?

* * *

A quasi routine is formed.

_I'm bored, let's get lunch._

_**All you did Monday was complain about how many pages you had to write this week. Shouldn't you be doing that?**_

_I'll buy. _

_I'll come to your office._

_I'll venture out to the Upper East Side._

_I'll go to a tea house with you._

_I'll buy your assistant coffee._

_I'll give her a signed copy of my book._

_I'll give you an interview._

_**Meet me downstairs.**_

_**And Humphrey: you're the last person that my magazine would want to interview.**_

* * *

It carries on like this, the two of them meeting up for lunch and coffee and the occasional brunch- _"Pre-business breakfast, Dan?" "Go 'way my agent got me drunk last night." "...We can go to a diner if you want. You can have that black coffee you like... Maybe some bacon and disgusting greasy food if-" "Be here in ten."- _for quite a while.

And it's nice. Blair has a best friend again (not that she'd tell Dan that), and they can watch movies and banter off of each other and, well, she has someone to spend her time with, really.

It's all working out nicely.

And then they go to Rufus and Lily's Christmas dinner.

* * *

"Don't go, then."

"I can't_ not_," he whinges to her over the phone like the 30 year old that he is. "I haven't been with my dad at Christmas for a good five years now, Blair. And now that I'm back in the city... I can't exactly just skip out on him again."

"Well you _can_, but-"

"Oh shut up," He groans as he fights off a Christmas tree branch in a department store.

"What are you even _doing_ wherever you are, Humphrey? It sounds like you're beating up small children or something."

"Yes, Blair," He drawls sardonically, "That's exactly what I'm doing. Beating up children. Merry Christmas to all and an arrest warrant for me."

"It's possible. Who knows what you've been doing all these years off in strange, third-world countries."

"London isn't a third world-"

"Might as _well_ be by some of the girls that I met-"

"You're so _wanky_ sometimes-"

"Being born in Essex doesn't excuse you from having _manners_, my god."

Dan just stops, bursting into laughter, a few other shoppers turning to stare.

"Oh my god, you're ridiculous," he says with warmth, dodging another display of christmas wrapping boxes and wandering into a section that seems to be dominated by ceramic elephants.

Lily likes ceramic elephants, doesn't she?

"No one likes ceramic elephants," she tells him through the phone line.

"Which probably means that my mother likes them, so that's her done," He says half jokingly and half really _not_ as he picks up a miniature white animal.

It's quite cute, actually.

Blair might like it, he thinks. (He doesn't say that one out loud, though.)

Blair sighs. "I have to go, a meeting to get to blah, blah, _blah_, not that you'd understand, you're practically unemployed."

"As always, thank-you for that."

"You're welcome." She says, and she's about to hang up the phone, he can tell, but-

"Wait!" He says, and it's loud enough so that he gets a fresh set of people turning around to stare at him.

"...Yes, Dan?" She asks him amusedly.

"I... What are you doing Christmas day, Waldorf?" He asks her.

"Going to Paris," she tells him, "As you well know."

His throat closes up and he swallows, hoping the fear- no, not fear, that would be _stupid_- is swallowed up too.

"Do you want to not?"

* * *

Miraculously, she agrees.

Maybe he sounds desperate, or maybe she's been having Christmas in Paris for so long now, but maybe, just maybe, this is what they really want; Christmas together in New York City but were both too afraid to ask.

"It's going to be really great." Dan tells her earnestly.

Well, sort of earnestly. It is _Christmas_ after all. The whole white, New York snowy December thing he drooled over back in high school has kind of lost its novelty now.

But even so, he can't help feeling just a little bit... excited. The spring in his step more pronounced, his smile more genuine as the days wear on and Blair stays by his side.

Yeah, no, he thinks. This year, _this_ year, Christmas is going to be good.

* * *

Late at night on December the twenty-fifth he'll walk along an Upper East Side street cursing to himself about _Blair freaking Waldorf_.

"Merry fucking Christmas," he snorts to no one, grabbing the package he'd wrapped up in his jacket for her and hurling it into the street.

And he doesn't hear it, but a little ceramic elephant cracks into pieces.

But that's later. First there's Christmas dinner. (And Chuck, a separation and a pregnancy to announce.)

(...Later.)

* * *

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	2. Chapter 2

_**Elephants Never Forget,**_

_**Chapter Two (without a name because wow naming chapters sounds like a lot of effort)**_

_Expensiveimagination_

_(A/N: Thanks to my anon who was like 'hurry up bitch you can't leave it like this' because yeah, you were right. BUT YOU DEFINITELY WEREN'T RIGHT WHEN YOU SAID THAT BLAIR WAS PREGNANT WITH CHUCK'S BABY BECAUSE **NO**.)_

_(...No offense.)_

* * *

**Because it's been ages, this is what happened at the end of the last chapter: **

_Yeah, no, he thinks. This year, this year, Christmas is going to be good._

_Late at night on December the twenty-fifth he'll walk along an Upper East Side street cursing to himself about Blair freaking Waldorf._

"_Merry fucking Christmas," he snorts to no one, grabbing the package he'd wrapped up in his jacket for her and hurling it into the street._

_And he doesn't hear it, but a little ceramic elephant cracks into pieces._

_But that's later. First there's Christmas dinner. (And Chuck, a separation and a pregnancy to announce.)_

_(...Later.)_

* * *

He and Blair agree to just meet at Lily and Rufus's- _"You'd be going past their house to get to mine, Humphrey, it would be pointless." "Just trying for a little solidarity here, Blair." "I'll meet you there," _she says before hanging up_- _and so by the time he gets there- five... ten... ok, fine, _twenty_ minutes late, Blair's the one that opens the door up onto him, tapping a heeled foot impatiently with a scowl on her face.

"Do you know how long I've been here for, Humphrey?"

"Well no, not precisely," he says, shouldering past her and then doubling back, remembering to kiss her on the cheek because it's _Christmas_, leaning back with a grin on his face that her lips twitch upwards at. "But I'm _guessing_ around half an hour."

"Try five minutes," snorts his father, walking into the lobby, passing Dan a drink.

"Coke?" He asks, looking at his glass in bemusement. "Coke in the Van-der-bass-Rhodes-Humphrey house at Christmas?"

"Problem?" Rufus asks him, cocking an eyebrow.

"No, just surprised is all."

"Well," Rufus smiles, "Pregnant women can't drink."

That's when Dan drops his wine glass, his mouth open as he looks at Blair.

"Oh _god no_, Humphrey. Try again."

* * *

"Pregnant," he asks Lily in surprise.

"I know," she agrees, looking every bit as shocked as Dan. "I _know_," She says again, this time with a emotional little laugh.

And Dan thinks about it, really thinks about Lily and Rufus with their son somewhere out there in the world and how long they fought to find each other, and fought their own feelings to get where they are today.

And he believes, truly believes, smiling brightly at his step-mother, that even at 49 and 50, no one deserves this more than his dad and Lily.

"So that's a _no_ to menopause in the Rhodes family, then." Blair just comments.

From somewhere in the kitchen, Rufus snorts.

* * *

What his dad doesn't tell him- and Dan doesn't blame him, because hey, all of a sudden his wife's _pregnant-_ is that they have another family member visiting for Christmas that Dan and Blair don't know about.

(Three guesses as to who, Dan thinks sarcastically.)

(Yeah.)

(Dan only needs the one guess, actually.)

"Dan," Chuck nods. "Blair."

...And isn't this awkward? Chuck seeing Dan and Blair together, sitting on the couch having Christmas with Dan's parents.

(Later, he'll say to Blair with amusement that he didn't believe it. Her and lost little lonely boy. _"I don't know how little and lost he is now," Blair will tell Chuck, rolling her eyes. "Well of course not. He's found you.")_

But for now, they're all silent.

* * *

And then there's turkey with cranberry sauce that his dad puts down in the centre of the table with a manly, proud smile that shows everyone there just who made it.

"Wow dad, thanks, the sauce looks a bit iffy though."

"Hush," is all Rufus says, ruffling his son's hair and ignoring Dan's protests about him being too old for that.

"I feel thirty right now, making you eleven and therefore the _perfect_ age for that, Daniel," Lily adds as she puts out the last dish, taking her seat.

"Well you'll always be seventeen and scrawny to me, Humphrey," Chuck adds, raising his glass.

"You too, Charlie Trout," Dan smirks, raising his glass.

Chuck just smiles, and Blair feels a little tension leave her shoulders.

* * *

"Have you talked to Serena today?" Blair asks Lily as she finishes off her dinner. "Because I haven't managed to get a hold of her."

"Ah," Lily says, pausing. "That would be because of the bad reception at her grandmother's house."

"CeeCee's? Aren't her and Josh at his parents' place?"

"...Her and Josh aren't exactly..." Lily trails off.

"Oh my _god_." Blair says. And it's not even because she's _surprised_, but because- "She didn't even tell me! What- when did this-"

"They only decided- well Serena only decided to leave- yesterday," Chuck tells her smoothly.

"You knew? You knew before _me_?"

Chuck doesn't say anything, just looks at her. In fact, the only people that _do_ look lost are her and Dan, Dan's face screwed up in confusion as he looks back and forth between Chuck and Blair.

"Right," Blair says, "Of course. Naturally she'd tell _you_, Chuck, before me, her best friend."

Chuck just snorts, "Serena and I both know who your best friend is."

Blair just blinks.

"_Dan_," he sighs, like this is easy to understand, and she's making it difficult. "You replaced Serena with _Dan _when she got married."

And really, it _is_ easy to understand, and she and Dan _are_ making it difficult.

Still, that doesn't stop the two of them asking him,

"_What_."

* * *

After that, and Dan and Blair trading deer-in-the-headlights looks with each other, Blair snaps into action, grabbing Chuck's collar and physically dragging him out of his seat- and away from his sweet potatoes, which, really, "_Was that necessary, Blair,"_- upstairs into what used to be the study and is now-

A baby's room.

"Oh," Blair says, standing next to her ex-husband in a room with a crib and yellow walls, boxes of infant items piled up against the wall.

It hurts more than it should, and she finds herself gripping Chuck's hand all of a sudden, because... This could have been them.

Instead she's 30 and divorced- she supposes that's better than what she _was_, 28 and divorced- but it's not even that that's bothering her, it's- it's-

"Have I been a bad friend?" She asks him quietly. "Why- why would Serena go to _you_?"

Chuck just sighs.

"Because I know what it's like to ruin a marriage, and you don't."

Blair's face falls. "Chuck, you didn't... You didn't ruin us, alright?" She says softly, cupping the sides of his face. "We both did that."

He returns the gesture, staring at her. "I know, but it was mostly me, and Serena's feeling a lot of guilt right now, and I don't think she wanted to have to face up to you with that."

"Me?" Blair laughs. "It's like the two of you are trying to paint me off as a saint or something."

"Not a saint," Chuck tells her sadly, tucking her bob behind her ear. "Just an innocent victim."

And then, because they're Chuck and Blair and always _will_ be, even if they'll never be Chuck and Blair _together _again, he kisses her.

Just chastely, but it's enough for Dan to see through the half-opened door when he comes in to check on them.

And then, feeling more burnt than he has any right to be, he grabs his coat and slips out the front door, telling his dad that he needs to make a call.

And he's never been more thankful at his father's refusal to question him as he walks out of his house, into the street on Christmas night.

* * *

Blair doesn't hear Dan leave, but asks for him when she and Chuck come downstairs, Chuck sitting down and getting right back into Christmas dinner, pulling out a flask from his jacket.

Of course.

"He's just gone to make a call." Rufus tells her, coming back in from seeing Dan out to sit with Chuck and Lily.

"Outside." Blair asks incredulously. "He's gone to make a call outside."

"He took his coat, too, after he came downstairs, if you're collecting clues in the mystery," Rufus adds, and _oh_, _there_ _we go_, that's where Dan gets it from.

And then Blair realizes just what she's been told.

Dan was upstairs. Dan was probably looking for her. Dan _left_.

"_Shit_," she says suddenly, high-tailing it out of the penthouse without grabbing her bag or her coat and without saying any goodbyes.

There's plenty of time to be gracious later, she thinks as she gets into the elevator.

* * *

"Dan!" Blair calls as she runs out onto the dark street, spotting a lone figure further down the block of Lily and Rufus' building. "Dan, for gods sakes- _Dan_- stop running away from me!" She screeches.

"Waldorf, leave me alone." He says, not turning to face her, but slowing to a stop so that she can catch up.

It's ten-o-clock at night, nearly boxing day, nearly _not Christmas_, and she's sort of annoyed.

"Why so pissy, Humphrey?" She asks him, jogging- and doesn't that sound stupid, Queen B running after lonely boy- around his side so that they're face to face on the sidewalk. "And why on _earth_ did you just call me Waldorf?"

"Well last time I checked it was your _name_," he deflects, rolling his eyes. "Unless it's going to be Bass again, in which case, please, send me an wedding invite."

"I-" and then Blair laughs. "So that _is _what this is about."

Dan just scowls, avoiding her eyes and looking down the Avenue instead. The coloured fairy lights that seem to decorate all of New York's buildings at the moment are reflecting in his eyes, she notices.

"Dan, I'm not getting back together with Chuck."

There's a little twitch to Dan's head, like he wants to focus on her, but he lets on nothing else.

"We were married," Blair sighs, shaking her head. "I'll always love Chuck just like you'll always love Serena."

"That's the thing Blair, I _don't_ love Serena. Not even a little bit, alright?"

"Well that's just not true," she snaps. "I saw you on the day of their wedding," Blair tells him, and there's no need to explain who '_they'_ are. "I saw your face, and I sure as hell saw the devastation there, Dan."

"That wasn't devastation!" He says, throwing his hands in the air frustratedly.

"Yes it was, Dan! And that's how I'll feel if Chuck ever gets married again too! Because for me he's always going to be twenty-four and kneeling on one knee, and it hurts me to see - it hurts me _every time I see him_- that he isn't there, isn't that man anymore! So sue me, alienate me and pretend like _we're_ 24 or 17 again and send me away already, will you, for kissing him! Because this passive aggressive bullshit you're pulling on me right now, I can't be _bothered _with it." Blair spits.

And then,

"...I bought you an elephant." Dan mumbles.

"I- what?" Blair asks, dumbfounded.

She was expecting him to yell, to call her out on accusing him of being in love with Serena a little more, she was even prepared to have him profess his _love_ for her or something, but then again, it's like she said.

They're not seventeen. They're not twenty-four. Dan and Blair are thirty now, and most of the time, they act it.

Dan sighs. "I bought you a little ceramic elephant."

Blair blinks. "After I told you that no one likes them."

"Exactly."

Blair swallows, because for some reason this isn't... funny.

"Why."

"Because I love you," he shrugs. "...And then I threw it down the street."

She can't help but laugh at that one. "The elephant, or our love?"

"The elephant," Dan says somberly, "I threw the elephant, not our-" Dan freezes, realizing what she's said. "...Our love?"

"Yes, Humphrey," she sighs, like it's 2008 and she's having to drag him through _how-you-plot-against-Georgina _lessons again.

Some things never change.

"Our love."

But then again, some things really, really _do_.

* * *

ugh. Hope that's ok (it's pretty average, I know, but hey.)

A review a day sends good karma your way, bros.


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